On the afternoon of July 26, Xia Yuan, the granddaughter of Nanjing Massacre survivor Xia Shuqin and one of the first group of Historical Memory Inheritors of the Nanjing Massacre, stood at the podium of Ritsumeikan University in Japan, holding a photo of her grandmother as she delivered a deeply moving speech. This marked the first time that Historical Memory Inheritors of the Nanjing Massacre shared the horrific experiences of their elders during the Nanjing Massacre on Japanese soil.

In her 30-minute speech, Xia Yuan recounted the tragedy of her grandmother Xia Shuqin’s family, who were brutally murdered when Xia Shuqin was just eight years old. As she described the cold morning of December 13, 1937—the day the Japanese invaders occupied Nanjing—when nine members of the Xia family, living at No. 5 Xinlukou in the southern part of the city, lost seven relatives to atrocities committed by Japanese troops, her voice trembled slightly. "Her mother was gang-raped and then bayoneted to death, with a bottle forced into her lower body; her two elder sisters were gang-raped and stabbed to death; her father was shot dead after kneeling and begging for mercy…" At this point, tears streamed down Xia Yuan’s cheeks.

Every detail Xia Yuan shared came from the searing memories of her grandmother, Xia Shuqin. The horrific scene left behind after the Japanese soldiers carried out their brutality was captured on camera and in writing by John Magee, chairman of the International Committee of the Nanjing Red Cross Society. It was also documented in The Diaries of John Rabe, serving as irrefutable evidence of history.

Japanese student Kimura Rio, who lived in Beijing for 15 years, felt both angry and heartbroken after listening to Xia Shuqin’s speech. She told reporters that while struggling to understand why the Japanese invading forces had committed such atrocities, she was also deeply troubled by the irresponsible attitude of some Japanese people today.

In 1994, Xia Shuqin became the first survivor of the Nanjing Massacre to publicly condemn the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Japan since the end of the war. She exposed the crimes of the Japanese military in cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima.